


Falling, Catching

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of car accident, Piano Player AU, Recovery, angst but then fluff, ballerina au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 11:22:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7435602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo Fitz is a jazz pianist, playing classical for a ballet class so that he can play clubs at night. Jemma Simmons is a ballerina who talks him into private sessions on Saturday mornings. During these Saturday morning sessions, he plays what he wants and she always manages to move to it. </p><p>Finally, and mostly on accident, he asks her on a date. After six months of waiting, Jemma is thrilled, only to be devastated when he stands her up. </p><p>Then she learns why, and it all seems petty when he may never play the piano again. </p><p>A story of the passions that drive us, the ways we recover, and what it means to love someone for who they are and not what they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling, Catching

**Author's Note:**

> From the tumblr prompt: Could you do a Fitzsimmons AU where Jemma is a dancer and Fitz a piano player who plays in her class and they meet every weekend to practise until one day Fitz doesn't show up because he had an accident and can't play anymore
> 
>  
> 
> The song played at the end is Falling, Catching by Agnes Obal (and that's where the title is from too)
> 
> Hope you enjoy :)

He tries not to watch her when she dances. He’s supposed to be playing, unobtrusively in the corner. But he doesn’t really need to watch the keys, these days. He’s been playing for longer than he can even remember, and the teacher always asks him to play the same stuff–the ballet classics–so it’s not like he needs sheet music at all. It’s muscle memory, so his eyes drift to the beautiful brunette with the lengthy, creamy limbs and the mischievous little smile whenever she catches him.

He tries not to get too excited about it, tries to remind himself that it doesn’t mean she was looking at him, too. 

But it only gets worse, once they start practicing on their own on the weekends. He slips on notes in pieces he’s played close to a thousand times. 

Jemma–that’s the dancer’s name, Jemma–she just giggles, in that carefree kind of way he can’t ever seem to get out of his head. 

It overpowers the sound of his piano, even. He’s sure it’ll never get out of his head. 

She brings him tea, since they meet at 9 a.m., and sometimes even bakes homemade pastries that taste like heaven. She smells like vanilla and she talks over him, finishing his sentences in a way that he would find agitating, if she were anyone else in the world. He does the same to her, and it reaches a point where other people can hardly understand their back and forth. To everyone else, it is muddled and confusing.

But to him, it isn’t. She’s  _Jemma_ and even though this dance thing is just a side-gig to help pay the bills while he plays in jazz clubs at night–well, it’s become the best part of his week. 

His drummer, Daisy, teases him relentlessly when he shows up late for rehearsals because Jemma wanted to keep going. Because he would play for her all day if that’s what she wanted, even if his fingers started bleeding. 

He plays a new lick during a set when Jemma shows up in the audience. It’s an improv bar that he didn’t expect, and neither did his band mates, but as always, they keep up with his musical conversation. Hunter’s guitar talks right back, Mack’s sax following shortly after.

Jemma beams from the front row. 

He’s on cloud nine. 

*** 

“You were fantastic last night,” Jemma sighs when he meets her at the doors of the studio.

There are many ways he’d like to hear her say those words, but standing on a sidewalk after definitely _not_ spending the night in his bed–not on the list. 

“Thanks,” he says, cheeks practically purple. “I was uh–surprised to see you there.” 

“You support me,” she reasons as she hands him the paper mug of tea. Her hair is loose, unlike the way she wears it in class, and her leotard is a deep burgundy. She has on baggy sweats over it, rolled over a few times, and he swears it’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen. “I support you. That’s how this works, Fitzy.” 

He rolls his eyes as she unlocks the studio doors. “Will you never stop with the Fitzy?” 

“Not until you let me call you Leo,” she teases. 

“You have to earn the first name,” he grins. 

“And how might a girl do that?” she asks. She chews on her lip, captivating him immediately. 

It slips out. They’re words he’s always wanted to say but in this instance, it’s not really on his own volition. 

“How about you let me take you to dinner?” 

She freezes in her tracks. Her little canvas bag, holding her pointe shoes, hits the ground. 

“What?” 

He shuts his eyes. “Shit. Jemma, I’m–just–ignore that, alright?” 

She shakes her head wildly. “No. No, I don’t _want_ to ignore it. I was just surprised is all.” 

Now he’s the one gawking. “Really?” 

“Yes,” she beams. “I’d like that.” 

“Well…alright then,” he says rather clumsily, making his way to the piano bench. “I’ll uh–I’ll come up with some places to run by you. For that.” 

“Great,” Jemma smiles. She reaches down to take off her sweatpants and he suddenly feels very inappropriate watching her. She plops down onto the ground to put on her ballet shoes, and he briefly wonders if asking her to leave right now for dinner, at 9 a.m., is acceptable. He decides to quit while he’s ahead.

Instead, he plays, and she dances. When it’s just the two of them, he can do his own thing. She doesn’t insist that he play the classical crap he hates, that her dance instructor makes him play again and again. She moves to his improvised songs with ease, even the ones that are rough jazz. 

For a classically trained ballerina, she can really improvise. It’s one of his favorite things about her, her ability to move to any song, and especially her ability to move to any of  _his_  songs. 

When they’re done, hours later, he promises to call her later to set up dinner. He picks a place around 2 p.m., and she agrees to meet him there at 6:00. 

But then 6:00 comes and goes, and Jemma Simmons sits alone at a table in a pretty white dress, trying to pretend like she’s not about to cry. 

She orders and eats by herself, because she refuses to be the girl who’s obviously been stood up. 

*** 

He doesn’t come back to the studio. For _almost two weeks_. He doesn’t show up for classes, or for their individual sessions. She pretends like she’s not devastated by it, but it still hurts like hell. 

It hurts like hell and then she gets angry. And then she gets drunk with her friend Bobbi, and then she calls him.

Because it’s time to yell and scream, she thinks. Because he shouldn’t have done this to her, he shouldn’t have asked her out if he didn’t want to take her to dinner. 

A girl answers. Jemma’s heart plummets.

But what the girl says next hurts even worse. 

“You must be Jemma,” she says. “I’m um–I’m Daisy, his drummer? He was…he was in an accident.” 

The phone clatters from her hand. Bobbi picks it up to get the details from Daisy. 

“I’ll take you in the morning,” Bobbi assures her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “We can’t go now.” 

“I–I want to–” 

“Not now,” Bobbi says firmly. “First thing tomorrow, okay? Let’s get some water and some food in you.” 

Jemma nods weakly and lets Bobbi make all the decisions for the rest of the night. She’s grateful for it in the morning, when Bobbi shakes her awake at 8 a.m. with a mug of tea. She has no headache and no nausea, avoiding the hangover she would have had without her friend’s intervention. 

“I have all the information and the room number,” Bobbi says. She’s business as usual, efficient and crisp as she drags Jemma out of bed. “I’ve already laid out your outfit. Your favorite jeans and that shirt you said Fitz complimented you on.” 

“The Ray Charles one?” 

“Exactly,” Bobbi smiles gently. “Also, I stole a t-shirt from you because I couldn’t wear my bar top to the hospital.” 

Jemma grins. “You always wanted to steal that Star Wars shirt.” 

“True,” Bobbi admits. She glances down at the blue shirt on her torso with a grin. “I think I’ve earned it.” 

“Yes you have,” Jemma agrees. She peels off her pajamas and begins getting ready. “Did um…did Daisy tell you how bad it is?” 

Bobbi inhales sharply. “It…doesn’t look good, Jemma. You should be ready for that.” 

Jemma gulps and nods, looking away from her friend. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Never wanting to be without someone?” 

Bobbi smiles sadly. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever had that.” 

“It’s silly,” Jemma says self-deprecatingly. “I hardly know him.” 

“You _do_ know him,” Bobbi retorts seriously. “You see him more than you see me, nowadays. He’ll be so glad to have you there with him.” 

“I hope so.” 

*** 

As it turns out, he’s not glad for anything. He’s still unconscious when she arrives. His drummer, Daisy, sits at his bedside with swollen, tired eyes. She looks up as soon as they enter and musters an exhausted smile. “

“Hi, you must be Jemma,” Daisy greets. She holds out her hand and Jemma ignores it, choosing to pull her into a hug instead. Daisy immediately sinks into the stranger’s embrace. “Thank you for coming.”

 

“Of course,” Jemma says with a shaky breath.

She untangles from his friend to turn her attention to Fitz. Bobbi slides a chair behind her, on the other side of Fitz’s bed from Daisy. Bobbi and Daisy speak to each other in hushed tones, apparently continuing an earlier conversation from the phone, but Jemma doesn’t hear them.

She is singularly focused on Fitz—the paleness of his skin, the sallowness of his cheeks, the shallow breaths shaking his ribcage, the only indication that he’s alive at all.

“What happened?” Jemma asks, voice thick. It’s hard to imagine him this way, the boy with the hands that can never seem to stay still.

“He was on his way to meet you,” Daisy sniffs. “He uh—he called me on his way. He was really nervous about the whole thing. I’d already had to veto like, seven outfits on Snapchat—“

Jemma laughs, a short bark of joy as she reaches for his hand. She examines it carefully, ensuring there’s no damage that she’ll worsen.

“—and then all of a sudden I heard him yell. Then a crash. I shouted his name a few times but I got nothing. I actually work in IT during the day, so I wound up hacking the GPS on his phone—“

“And yet the IT guys at my job can’t even help me set up an email account,” Bobbi mumbles bitterly. Daisy flashes her a smile at that.

“I called 911, and they brought him here. I’m his emergency contact, so…”

Daisy looks at Jemma suddenly, a strange look passing over her face.

“But that doesn’t mean anything, trust me. I’m not—Fitz and I have never—“

Jemma tilts her head in confusion, her mind taking a long moment to sort out what Daisy is trying to say. “Oh! Oh, Daisy, no! You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“Yeah,” Bobbi jumps in. “Her other best friend is this absolutely beautiful cop named Antoine.”

“Don’t call him that,” Jemma says with a crinkled nose. She turns back to Daisy in explanation. “He goes by Trip.”

“It’s really nice to hear actual voices,” Daisy tells them, drawing her legs up to her chest. She hugs them, resting her cheek on her knees. “It’s been a long time of silence.”

“Has he woken up at all?” Jemma asks worriedly.

Daisy nods several times. “Yeah. He woke up on day nine, but then they put him in a medically induced coma.”

“How was he?” she presses urgently. “Was he—is he—“

Daisy swallows hard. “He may never play again. His arm was badly damaged. His hand—it’s probably never going to be the same.”

Jemma gasps softly. She can’t imagine what that would be like—if she woke up from an accident, unable to dance ever again. It’s not just her job, not just a passion. It’s a massive, integral part of her identity as a human being, and she’s not sure who she would be without it.

“Could he speak?” Bobbi asks. “I’m a physical therapist, actually, in this hospital. I don’t know much about TBIs, but—“

“TB what?” Daisy asks.

“Traumatic brain injuries,” Bobbi finishes. “Sorry. Bad habit.”

“Yeah, he spoke,” Daisy murmurs. She draws little patters on her kneecaps with her index finger. “He um—he asked for you, actually, but I didn’t get his phone back from the cops until the night you called.”

Jemma’s heart clenches painfully in her chest. She strokes the back of his hand softly. Bobbi moves to put a hand on Daisy’s shoulder, giving it a little squeeze.

“Have you eaten lately?” she asks. Jemma smiles slightly; Bobbi Morse, always the big sister.

Daisy shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on,” Bobbi urges her, practically picking her up out of the chair. “There’s a café about a block from here. I’m getting you some eggs and bacon.”

“Oh, I don’t—“

“Jemma has this covered,” Bobbi assures her. Jemma takes Daisy’s number to call if anything changes, and then she’s left alone with Fitz and the beeping machines at his sides.

She sits in silence for a while, until the sound becomes almost insufferable. Without letting go of him, she wrestles her phone out of her back pocket. She puts on a recording of his favorite Thelonius Monk song, letting the notes fill the room. Jemma leans forward, resting her cheek on his hand.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says. “I called you an ass. I called you a lot of things, actually, but I didn’t mean them. I didn’t know. I can’t imagine how I ever thought you would do that. You’re not the type to stand anyone up and you’re—well, you’re—you’re _precious_ to me.”

Her throat tightens and she struggles to hold it together.

“This is the part where you get all angry, and you say ‘you think I’m precious? Just what a man likes to hear, Simmons’ and then I roll my eyes and I hit you on the arm, and you start playing something really, really beautiful.”

The tears come, then, because what if he can’t, ever again? She’ll still like him, of course, for exactly who he is. She always has, and that won’t change just because he can’t play an instrument the way he used to.

But it will change _everything_ for him.

“I know they want you to sleep,” she half-sobs. “But I need you to wake up, just for a minute, so I know you’re still in there, okay? I just—I need—“

Her head falls back down and she finally releases it, the tears she hadn’t cried in the restaurant when she thought the man she’d been smitten with for six months stood her up, the tears she didn’t cry in the bar when Daisy told her about the accident, the tears she hadn’t cried when she first saw him, wounded and small.

She’s not sure how long this goes on, but it must be for quite a while. His hand twitches against her wet face and she looks up, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Fitz?”

“’mma?”

“Fitz!” she laughs joyously. She launches to her feet, peppering his face with impulsive, elated kisses. “Fitz.”

“Hi,” he groans. His voice is raspy and weak. His mouth opens and closes, and then he screws his eyes shut with a frustrated moan.

“Fitz?” she asks tentatively. He lifts his shaky hand up, gesturing loosely.

“The uh—the—words—“

 

“Don’t try to talk,” she soothes, moving to sit on the mattress beside him. Her fingers reach up to brush his hair and he shivers. “I don’t think you’re even supposed to be awake.”

He nods against her hand as she moves her palm to his scruffy cheek. She rubs her thumb in little circles on his cheekbone, and he falls back asleep.

He knows her. The rest of it, they can figure out from here.

***

He’s angry and frustrated most of the time. His physical therapy doesn’t move as fast as he wants it to, even as his cognitive therapy increases his speech abilities exponentially.

He just wants to sit at a piano and play the right notes. It’s all he wants, and Jemma can see it tearing him apart.

Bobbi, his newly assigned physical therapist, refuses to allow it.

“Just let him try!” Jemma argues out in the hallway. Bobbi crosses her arms and stares her best friend down.

“No way!” she retorts. “Jemma, he is not ready yet. You don’t understand, confirmation of his worst fears at this stage of the recovery process—“

“He’ll at least have _hope_.”

“He doesn’t need hope,” Bobbi says firmly. “He needs to have some patience, and so do you. I think you should go home for the day. Having you here—it makes him nervous. He does better on his own.”

Jemma watches the tall blonde stride into the room, leaving her out in the hall. She runs her hands over her hair in frustration. She pops into the room after composing herself, to grab her tote bag from near where Fitz sits, fiddling with a puzzle.

“I’ll be back,” Jemma says with the brightest smile she can muster. As soon as she speaks, the puzzle falls from his hands. He looks up nervously, almost afraid, and her stomach swoops painfully.

Maybe Bobbi has a point. Maybe he will do better when she’s not around.

She takes off for the studio, feeling incredibly guilty as she laces her pointe shoes. She can still do the thing she loves most in the world and he can’t—it feels horribly, terribly unfair. Plus, the new piano player isn’t nearly as good as Fitz. She can’t read where he’s going next, and she stumbles over combinations that she’s done a million times.

It’s not the same without him.

***

It takes two months before Bobbi finally approves him to try playing the piano. She insists that he does it alone.

“You’ve seen how he gets,” Bobbi scolds Jemma when she opens her mouth to protest. “Look, I know you’re trying to help. And I think your emotional support means a lot to him but please—you’ve gotta let him do this alone.”

Biting back an argument, she nods. She smiles at Fitz and gives his hand a squeeze.

It’s hard to think that two months ago, she couldn’t wait to kiss him at the end of a date. Now, the most they do is hold hands, sometimes cuddle up together.

She doesn’t want to push him. She’s not sure what he’s thinking.

She just knows that she’s fallen for him more and more every day. Through the tantrums and the heartache, the laughs and the triumphs. Even if he never plays another note in his life, she’ll love him just the same.

It’s a matter of whether or not he’ll be able to love himself.

Fitz walks into the practice room they rented and Jemma paces outside with Bobbi. It’s soundproof, and they can’t hear him at all.

He comes storming out just thirty minutes later, his entire body trembling and tears on his face.

“Fitz!” Jemma calls out, trailing after him. Bobbi tries to stop her, but Jemma has had enough of her friend’s interventions. She shakes Bobbi off and bolts for him. “Fitz, wait!”

He whirls on her, looking furious. “Just stop it, Jemma! Fucking stop!”

She freezes, mouth dropping open.

“It’s over, alright! It’s all over!”

“It’s not!” she insists, reaching for him. He steps back and she feels like she’s just been slapped.

“Just—I need some space, okay? I need—time and—and—“

She swallows hard around the lump in her throat and stares at the ground. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” he says firmly. “It—it’s what I want.”

The second time he says it, his voice cracks. She thinks he might take it back, but he doesn’t.

“I’ll call you when I’m—when I’m uh, ready.”

He turns on his heel and stalks down the street, hands shoved in his coat pockets. Jemma puts a hand to her mouth to stifle her cries. She turns around in search of Bobbi and collides with her friend’s body. Bobbi pulls her into a hug.

***

Weeks crawl by. It’s pure agony not to call him first, but he had said that he would be the one to call.

As much as it hurts, there is some relief in not being his emotional punching bag. The guilt she feels when she dances begins to lessen, until slowly it rises from her shoulders altogether. She throws herself with renewed vigor into her first love—ballet—and surrenders the rest of it to the universe.

She spends time with Daisy and Bobbi, the three of them having become quite close in the weeks of Fitz’s hospitalization. Daisy tries to talk about Fitz a grand total of one time. Bobbi silences her with a stony stare, and Daisy insists that she just wants to say that Fitz is being an idiot.

Jemma disagrees but she doesn’t say so. She’s not sure Daisy loves drumming the same way Fitz loves piano, the way she loves ballet.

It’s all encompassing, nearly suffocating, and she’s pretty sure the only thing she loves more than dancing is him.

She doesn’t have a pianist anymore for her Saturday sessions, but she does have a boombox and her iPod. She plugs it in, the same playlist of songs coming over the speakers.

She hasn’t danced to jazz since Fitz’s accident. She doesn’t start now.

She shakes her head of thoughts of him, unlocking the studio space and entering like it’s her home. It might as well be. She tosses her tote aside, digging out her shoes and stripping out of her baggy sweats. Jemma laces her shoes deftly, completely unaware of the figure on the piano until she stands to plug in her iPod.

She shrieks, an embarrassing sound, and her hand settles on her heart. Fitz holds his hands up in surrender, looking steadier than she remembers.

“Fitz!”

“Sorry,” he grimaces apologetically. His eyes drink her in and she crosses her arms over her stomach, suddenly self conscious.

“What are you doing here?”

“I uh—I wanted to show you something.”

He lays his hands on the keys, taking a shuddering breath. Jemma does her best to breathe normally, to tramp down the hurt and the pain and the nerves bubbling up in her chest.

His fingers begin to tap out a beautiful song, not his usual jazz but something sweet and almost—aquatic. As if on their own volition, her feet begin to move. She tips and tilts in her usual warm up across-the-floors. His eyes don’t lift from the keys like they used to. He studies them with furtive concentration, and when his song is fully over, he looks up with trembling lips.

“I um—I can’t really play what I used to,” he croaks. “It’s not the same, but I’m getting better.”

She watches him carefully as he stands from the bench. Her fingers curl around the barre beside her.

“I’m glad to hear it, Fitz, really.”

“You don’t look like it.”

She shrugs and looks away. “I just missed you.”

It’s a hard thing for her to admit. She’s never been great with her feelings but she’s trying to be better. He reaches out to grab her hands; his palms are a little sticky with sweat.

“I needed—being around you was hard. I wanted to push myself and ah, and be who you knew me as before all of this.”

“Fitz,” she sighs, exasperated. “Do you really think I’d have spent all that time and energy with you just because I was dreaming of the man that once was?”

 

“I, well…yeah.”

She rolls her eyes. “I spent all of that time with you because I wanted to. Because of your humor and your loyalty and kindness and strength. It had nothing to do with your skills.”

“We felt like a team,” he explains. “A give and take and all of a sudden it was like I could—I could only take. I couldn’t give you anything back.”

She softens and squeezes his hand.

“I never wanted anything.”

“But I did,” he insists emphatically. “I wanted to be—I needed to be—at least partially who I was. Even if there was no you. Music is what I always lived for, Jemma, I couldn’t just give it up.”

She steps closer to him, and her feet instinctively turn out into first position. Without her toes between them, she’s incredibly close to his chest.

“I know,” she says softly. “I just wish you would have talked to me.”

“That’s not easy now,” he says self-deprecatingly, twisting his wrist around in his tell-tale move of discomfort over his word-finding delays. She smiles softly and grabs his wrist.

“I know.”

“I’d—I’d like to try again,” he says as confidently as he can. His eyes drift to her lips. “I know I hurt you. Please know I would never do that on purpose.”

“Of course I know that.”

He nods, still intensely focused on her mouth. She gives him a few seconds before she huffs.

“Are you going to kiss me or not?”

He chuckles, low and warm, and finally, finally, presses his lips to hers. She rises on her toes, holding onto him around his shoulders. He laughs into the kiss, his hands splaying out on her lower back. She can feel the left one trembling, but she wonders if perhaps it would have done that anyway. Her legs are shaking, too, and she’s sure it has nothing to do with being in releve.

They stand like this for some time, deepening and softening their kisses in alternating turns, until finally she pulls away to look at him.

“Dinner,” she breathes.

He grins.

“I’d like that.”


End file.
